Social Media Platforms for Political Mobilization and Citizen Engagement in Democratic Campaigns

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine the effectiveness of social media in political activism and participative activism in democrative campaigns. Interviews and focus group discussions were made to gather data, in form of logs and diaries relating to the nature of exposure of the participants to political content, the interaction with the identified micro-influencers, and the overall implications of UGC. The studies used showed that micro-influencers are important in engaging their followers to political participation due to the close relationships they share with their followers. Furthermore, social media activism in the form of memes, other videos, and practical political campaigns can be seen as crucial means to amplify voices of political actors and prompt both – online and offline participation. Visual content, and especially emotionally appealing images and videos, proved to be an effective way to package relatively complicated political topics into easily understandable targets that can attract the attention of a larger audience. The research also focuses on the skepticism affecting those platforms and specific information on how fake news and increased polarisation can disrupt politics and erode trust in digital channels. These provide a degree of understanding of just how social media has influenced the activism and political engagements, for both empowering citizens involvement and for socially segmenting them.